Among A.O. Scott’s first instincts after seeing Thor, he writes in The New York Times, was to seek shelter “under a passing bus.” Director Kenneth Branagh’s pop-Shakespeare does nothing to save the new superhero flick: Thor, Scott writes, “is an example of the programmed triumph of commercial calculation over imagination.” Scott explains: “Branagh has not failed to make an interesting, lively, emotionally satisfying superhero movie, because there is no evidence that he (or the gaggle of credited screenwriters, or Paramount, the sponsoring studio) ever intended to make any such thing. On the contrary, the absolute and unbroken mediocrity of Thor is evidence of its success. This movie is not distinctively bad, it is axiomatically bad.” Scott says the film resembles a Ponzi scheme: “The purpose of putting this movie in theaters is to make sure you and all your friends go to the next one, and then the one after that.”